Aed Abu Amro, shot in the leg with a rubber bullet, Monday, November 5, 2018. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

When the image went viral it was compared to Eugène Delacroix’s famed painting “Liberty Leading the People” where lady liberty incarnate leads an armed crowd to oust King Charles X during the Second French Revolution while clutching what later became the flag of France.

Yesterday Abu Amro was shot in his leg with a rubber bullet while the Israeli navy was cracking down on the marine protests in the northern city of Beit Lahia that borders Zikim beach in Israel south of Ashkelon. I saw paramedics carry him off of the sandy shoreline. Abu Amro was struck when Israeli forces opened fire on a rally of 15 Palestinian boats unmoored from Gaza City’s port and headed towards Israeli waters. The scene was frantic as the fire came amid a barrage of tear gas also fired on the flotilla.

The flotilla protests have coincided with the Great March of Return demonstrations, meaning weekly Palestinians are facing off with Israeli forces at both the land barrier and on the seafront.
 

Aed Abu Amro winds a slingshot and waves a Palestinian flag, Friday, October 26, 2018. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Aed Abu Amro waves a Palestinian flag at a protest in the Gaza Strip on Friday, October 26, 2018. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Friday October 26, 2018. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Friday October 26, 2018. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Friday October 26, 2018. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Aed Abu Amro displays his iconic photograph, Friday, October 26, 2018. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

When I spoke to Abu Amro two weeks ago, he addressed the possibility of becoming injured. At that time, he said told me he “longed to taste the lovely pain of being shot by those Israeli snipers” because “we must struggle as long as injustice and humiliation are being practiced on Gaza people.”

Abu Amro said he has not missed any of the more than six months of protest that began in Gaza on March 30, 2018 and continue each Friday. Since the blockade over Gaza began 11 years ago, he has not been able to leave the enclave. He insisted, he will continue to protest at “whatever cost to him.”

Abu Amro was pleased that his image evoked a likeness to the French painting. That day he spent a total of three hours protesting, shirtless.

“It is really good to compare my shirtless image to this topless woman. I think she will inspire me,” Abu Amro said timidly while showing the French painting on his cell phone to his friends who circled around.

Delacroix painted the iconic image in 1830 commemorating those who took up arms and marched under the motto of liberty, equality and fraternity.

“I felt proud once I saw the image delivered into my Facebook inbox by a friend,” he said, “While going to protest, I am not interested in getting my photo taken by journalists, but that one has fueled me up to continue protesting.”
 

Aed Abu Amro, Friday October 26, 2018. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Friday October 26, 2018. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Friday October 26, 2018. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Describing the day the photograph was taken Abu Amro said he and some friends were monitoring the march from afar when plumes of thick smoke from tires burned by protesters and tear gas fired by the Israeli military created a thick cloud.

“This chaos warmed me up,” said Abu Amro who then rushed toward the fence separating Gaza from Israel. Some have suggested Abu Amro is motivated by despair and hopelessness, but he said that he does not feel that way.

“I have never miss a single lesson at my bodybuilding club and I am a Street Workout athlete,” he said, “My people, my friends and I love life more than the whole of people around the world.”

Hassouna, the photographer who snapped the photo told Mondoweiss Abu Amro looked like a “rebel for his people’s just cause.”

“Abu Amro and everyone from his generation do not have weapons, rather stones which have become an inherited element of Palestinian culture of resistance the occupation,” Hassouna told Mondoweiss, “I am very proud to convey this image to the whole world who supports Gaza, and to the lovers of humanity and freedom.”
 

Friday October 26, 2018. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Friday October 26, 2018. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Friday October 26, 2018. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Abu Amro comes from a humble background. He lives in a 970 square foot house with his family. It is uncomfortably overcrowded. Although the weekly protest location is only three miles away from his home, reaching it is not an easy task. Abu Amro earns about $2.70 a day from his cigarette counter. “Despite my hardships, I share half of what I bring with my family, and the other half pays for a taxi to get here,” he said of his commute to get to the demonstrations, which raises the question of why he does not take a bus, like thousands of other protesters? Abu Amro said the buses are paid for by political parties and he is an independent.

“So nobody can accuse me that I support any political faction, I come alone with my desire,” he said.

Ahmad Kabariti is a freelance journalist based in Gaza.

Courtesy: https://mondoweiss.net/

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Moving those yards closer left four Palestinians killed and 152 others injured by Israeli soldiers firing live ammunition from across the border, the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs reported.
 

April 20, 2018 Gaza protest. Photo by Mohammed Asad
 

Breaking the barriers of fear, the protesters hurled tear gas canisters back at the soldiers, buried them or even dumped them in buckets filled with water.

In the past three weeks, 37 Palestinians have been killed and hundreds wounded by troops firing from across the border fence.
 

April 20, 2018 Gaza protest. Photo by Mohammed Asad
 

Ra’fat Jendiyeh said he was the “only loser” of this week’s protest. Ra’fat, a 41-year-old farmer, owns 25-dunums (about six acres) near the fence, planted with okra, wheat and eggplant. He says his fields have been turned into a “daytime club and open-air restaurant.” His family had 35 dunums on the other side of the Israeli border too.
 

Ra’fat Jendiyeh at Gaza protests, April 20, 2018. Photo by Mohammed Asad.
 

“It is impossible to find someone walking between these fields before last March, except masked resistance fighters or farmers with faces well-known to the soldiers,” he told Mondoweiss.
 

April 20, 2018 Gaza protest. Photo by Mohammed Asad
 

“These masses are no longer afraid of anything,” he said. Thousands of casualties, dozens of dead and grisly scenes of wounds on television have not stopped them from joining the march. “So I cannot prevent dozens from running back and crushing the seedlings,” he said. “But it does not matter if they are relieved of their anger.”
 

April 20, 2018 Gaza protest. Photo by Mohammed Asad
 

In one protest camp, organizers placed four life-sized effigies of Israeli soldiers behind iron bars facing the fence. Hamas is believed to hold the remains of two soldiers from the 2014 war between Israel and Gaza.
 

April 20, 2018 Gaza protest. Images of Israeli soldiers. Photo by Mohammed Asad
 

Ismail Haniyeh, the chief of Hamas’s Political Bureau, said in a televised speech to mark Palestinian Prisoners’ Day on Tuesday, that his movement is ready for a prisoner swap with Israel through third-party mediation.
 

April 20, 2018 Gaza protest. Life size effigies of Israeli soldiers behind bars. Photo by Mohammed Asad
 

In today’s protests, a large number of women were also seen. Nour Habib, 17, and her mother, Nihad, 35, and her sisters were urging each other to move close to the border “to see the green fields behind the soldiers”.

Women are less likely to be shot at the weekly rally, it is widely understood.
 

April 20, 2018 Gaza protest. Nour Habib and her mother. Photo by Mohammed Asad
 

I asked Nihad Habib if her daughters and she are afraid to be in this precarious area. As she prepared Thai-style fried chicken for lunch, she replied, “I am originally from the Bayt Jirja village (15.5 km northeast of Gaza) and nothing frightens you as long as you… want to go back to your original land”.
Nour, who is preparing for high school exams next month, says she comes here weekly for a walk and to refresh her mind. “I do not think we’ll go this summer to the sewage polluted beach. Here I can breathe fresh oxygen.”
 

April 20, 2018 Gaza protest. Photo by Mohammed Asad
 

“We live in a male-dominated society,” she went on, and girls’ participation in the protests can make for a strange scene. But she said men were more accepting and encouraging the idea to be here, “especially since we came with my uncle, who did not like the idea at first, but he agreed and we got his car.”

Nour said she did not like the 300 meters “only” move of tents. “It should be moved at zero distance next Friday,” she said. Palestinians have no fear because they face a country that was built on their displacement. “They think the young will forget but we will not.”
 

April 20, 2018 Gaza protest. Nihad Habib fleeing tear gas. Photo by Mohammed Asad
 

Then Nour and her family fled due to a tear gas attack during the interview. So, being a female protester wasn’t a guarantee for protection after all.

The participation in the weekly rallies seems to have impressed even the children, some of whom feel lucky to have the demonstration to go to on Friday on their school weekend.
 

April 20, 2018 Gaza protest. Photo by Mohammed Asad
 

I met Basma Abu Hashish (9 years old) who was with her family eating lemon flavored ice.
 

April 20, 2018 Gaza protest. Basma abu Hashish, 9, and her family. Photo by Mohammed Asad
 

“Nothing is scary here,” she said.

“We brought mineral water to rinse our eyes if we have been attacked by gas,” she said. “At least my father will tell us stories about what he did when he was our age and what my granddad was catching in the Jaffa’s sea.”
 

April 20, 2018 Gaza protest. Photo by Mohammed Asad

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By late evening, the Gaza Health Ministry reported at least ten had been killed and more than 1070 injured by Israeli fire, a week after 18 Palestinians were killed at a similar rally.

Despite thick, acrid black smoke emitted from dozens of burning tires and cross by winds to the other side of the fence, Etaf, 58, decided to move the lunch party to Malaka’s border area. It is the closest point to her family’s original village, al-Muharraqa, 5 kilometers east on the other side of the fence.

“My father says that we had a big farm called the ‘Well’, which was full of olive and fig trees before the Nakba, so being here with my grandchildren gives me a sense of nostalgia. My heartbeat has been accelerated since I sat here at 8:00 a.m.” Etaf, a grandmother of 23 grandchildren, told Mondoweiss while holding two rusty keys of the farm’s gate and her father’s house in al-Muharraqa.

“Grandma promised she would tell us the story about ‘The Beautiful Salma and the Monster’ who lived in al-Muharraqa, after lunch.” Mohammed, 4, told me. He and his sister Rital, 6, were there with cousins from three uncles who were killed in an Israeli bomb attack on a Gaza police station in 2009.
 

Etaf Abdel-Aal and five grandchildren (Photo: Ahmad Kabariti)
 

Meanwhile, the whistling of tear gas bombs was heard almost every moment during the 10-hour-long protest. On the other side of the fence, the soldiers perched on the sandy hills along with the drones kept firing dozens of such bombs, while young men rushed to bury them, chanting: “The Palestinians will go to paradise, and the Israelis will go to hell!”

Young Palestinians had been collecting thousands of old tires for a week in the lead up to the peaceful protest which focused on five areas along the eastern border of Gaza. Today they were lucky when the hot winds moved the burning fumes towards the soldiers in an attempt to blur the soldiers’ vision, even though as the Jerusalem Post reported, soldiers brought in a huge fan to disperse the smoke.

If there was a moment of calm it was usually broken by angry cheers and yelling and waving to an ambulance crew to rescue the wounded. There was joyful chanting whenever the overloaded tire cart arrived to the area.

Those tire were gathered in a large hole to burn them batch by batch.
 

Protesters among the tires during the second Friday of the Great March of Return in Gaza. (Photo: Ahmad Kabariti)
 

Not far from the two-meter-deep collection of tires, Sherin Nasrallah, 30, was leaning on a tire as her male colleagues were trying to prevent her from getting closer to the soldiers. She angrily screamed back at them: “It is not your damned business! Let me go!”

Sherin, a Fatah activist,wanted to do more than she did last Friday, when she and her friends approached the fence and planted a Palestinian flag.

“At that moment, soldiers fired a tear gas bomb at us, and I spent the whole night in the hospital due to suffocation. So, today, I would burn this tire to burn those Israelis as they burned upon our hearts for 70 years. Today I want to be a martyr.”
 

Sheren Nasrallah (Photo: Ahmad Kabariti)
 

The young woman, says that she came here under her own steam. “I don’t suffer any social problems. Yesterday I dreamed that I was sleeping in a white coffin amid white roses. This homeland deserves more than our bodies, and I must return to Beersheba, even spiritually,” She said while was knocking on her tire and trying to ignore her colleagues.

The scene east of Khan Yunis, 35 kilometers from Gaza City, was not so different. Smoke and heat were not obstacles to the angry mass of protesters who sometimes poured water on their heads in preparation for a new round of burning tires.

The demonstration was the second of six planned protests organized by a wide group of civil society organizations and political parties. The rallies are scheduled to continue in a massive effort to demand the Palestinian right of return until May 15, the eve of the date commemorating Israel’s establishment 70 years ago, which Palestinians call the Nakba, or catastrophe.

The Israeli Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories, Major General Yoav Mordechai, sent a letter to the head of the World Health Organization on Wednesday, urging the body to take a stand against the “ecological disaster” due to the tire smoke.
 

Mahmoud Kurdish (Photo: Ahmad Kabariti)
 

Mahmoud Kurdiah, 22, commented on Mordechai’s complaint by saying the Palestinians would also file a complaint that Israel had been firing grenades stuffed with vanilla and Nutella for the last decade. “This is mad, the whole world saw the content of their bombs that burned our bodies, they have to play a more convincing game”.

“The Israelis are afraid of our unity. All the Palestinian parties are working together on this peaceful symbol”. Said Mahmoud, who wrapped in a Palestinian Keffiyeh.

Hamas announced on Thursday it would pay $3,000 to the family of anyone killed in the ongoing Gaza border riots, $500 to Palestinians critically wounded and $200 to those who sustain more minor injuries.

In a statement, the group said it would support the “family of each martyr” with $3,000, while those seriously wounded would receive $500.

The payments were being provided “in light of the difficult economic conditions experienced by our people in the Gaza Strip as a result of the continued Israeli siege.”

In the afternoon, the 26-year-old Mohammed Abu Eida was just arrived at the back of the demonstrations in Khan Younis, holding a pillow to place his right foot which he injured by an explosive bullet during clashes here three months ago.

“I do not care about pain.” Mohammed said. “I sit here to tell them that I will go back to Jaffa with my family. I do not care about the gas bombs and the live fire. These weeks of anger will not calm down even for 100 years.” Mohammed said.

“My grandfather told me that we should return to our land, and we have a map and old documents proving that,” he said. Mohammed’s parents were killed in a helicopter bombardment of their home 10 years ago in the Sabra neighborhood east of the city.
 

Mohammed Abu Eida (Photo: Ahmad Kabariti)

Ahmad Kabariti is a freelance journalist based in Gaza.

Courtesy: http://mondoweiss.net

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For Halima Abu Hendi, 40, a Palestinian living in the Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip, Trump’s steep cut could mean that her pantry will be empty next month. Halima survives off of food assistance from by the United Nations Refugee Works Agency (UNRWA) that comes in the form of parcels she picks up from a distribution center every 90 days. At the moment, her stock is already running low, with under a pound of chickpeas, sugar, and rice, and nearly out of milk powder to feed her husband and herself, and their seven children.

“We rely on chickpea to prepare Falafel for the three daily meals, and could replace it with sweetened noodles or canned tuna,” Halima said, explaining the UNRWA staples fill up 90 percent of her family’s diet.

Halima and her husband Abdul Baset Abu Hendi, 44, were both born in Jabalia camp.
 

Halima Abu Hendi. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Abdul Baset Abu Hendi. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Palestinian children sit on steps in Jabalia refugee camp in the Gaza Strip. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Last year the U.S. contributed $368 million to UNRWA, of which over $100 million went to services in Syria.  The move to cut aid takes place amid enormous pressure on Palestinian leaders to accept the U.S.’s recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and to continue discussing the prospects of a U.S. brokered peace deal.

UNRWA provides services to 5.3 million Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan. The refugees in Gaza live in eight UNRWA run camps, constitute 70 percent of the local population of nearly 2 million.

Yet in recent weeks UNRWA has become under review by the Trump administration as it eyes options to pressure the Palestinian leadership to work with the U.S. envoy for Middle East peace.

“[W]e pay the Palestinians HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year and get no appreciation or respect,” President Donald Trump wrote on Twitter while most of the Middle East was sleeping two weeks ago. “With the Palestinians no longer willing to talk peace,” he added, “why should we make any of these massive future payments to them?”

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu followed suit last week. He told his cabinet, “UNRWA is an organization that perpetuates the Palestinian refugee problem,” and “It also perpetuates the narrative of the right of return, as it were, in order to eliminate the State of Israel; therefore, UNRWA needs to pass from the world.”

Back in Jabalia, Abdul Baset, does not expect he can make up the coming food shortages. Although he is a tailor, Abdul Baset says he has not sewed for months. Gaza’s economy is depressed and unemployment is a staggering 42 percent, the highest in the world. 

“I use my UN ID card to receive canned tuna, frying oil, flour… .The aroma of sweetened noodles and fried falafel. Refilling the pantry is a festive moment for my family,” he told Mondoweiss days before the Trump administration made the announcement to hold the UN funds. At that time, the couple said most of their updates on the flow of UN goods came from casual conversations, which had turned worrisome in recent days.

“We do not know anything. Concern is endless and the feeling has taken control over this camp. It is in our daily conversations with neighbors who meet each day and night by our front doors,” Halima said

Aside from food aid, many Palestinians relay entirely on UNRWA’s health services. The UN runs nearly 200 health clinics for Palestinian refugees. UNRWA provides services for more than nine million patients visits at health care facilities in the region. 
 

Mariam Oraif. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

In Western Gaza City, Mariam Oraif, 74, waits at an UNRWA’s health center to pick up her insulin and get weekly treatment. Aside from diabetes she has high blood pressure. Mariam was not aware of the then impending cuts to UNRWA. When asked what she will do if this clinic is no longer able to provide her with medication, Mariam said of Trump, “He wants to kill us.”

“I can barely buy a 5 Shekel ($1.4) Paracetamol tablets. What should I do if I am forced to buy these free drugs from a pharmacy? Are you kidding me? I’m talking about $80, I never had such cash in my wallet,” she continued.

Wijdan Dahman, 28, was in the same clinic. Her infant was getting the Polio vaccine. She too was surprised to learn of the coming U.S. funding cut.

“Is this two-month-old infant politically involved?” Wijdan asked, “Do they want a disabled or sick generation, is it not enough to be a refugee in camps?, why should such baby pay the price for this foolish policy?”
 

Wijdan Dahman (R) carries her baby into a United Nations medical clinic in the Gaza Strip. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Sufian al-Wadiya. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

Near the parking leading to the clinic, Sufian al-Wadiya, 38, a municipal employee, said “Stopping UNRWA’s services is more dangerous than launching a war jets and tanks.”

If Trump reduces aid to Palestinian refugees, Sufian said “it would be a war against patients and schoolchildren who will turn into thieves.”

More than 500,000 Palestinian children are enrolled in 700 UNRWA schools across the region. 
 

Nadia Abu Ta’ima, a teacher at an UNRWA school in Gaza, and student Hanan. (Photo: Mohammed Asad)
 

In front of the UNRWA headquarters in Gaza, teacher Nadia Abu Ta’ima and her pupil, Hanan, 9, protested ahead of the Trump administration’s announcement. Nadia was among dozens of educators demanding pay increases. 

Hanan carried a banner:  “Miss Nadia must get a fixed-term contract.”

“Can you imagine the feeling of being a teacher who instructs around 50 pupils in one classroom and you might get a call one day that you no longer will come into school anymore?” Nadia said.

Hanan chimed in, “I do not understand why they might want fire miss Nadia. Is UNRWA bankrupted? My friends and I can collect money to pay our teacher.”

UNRWA was established in 1949 to provide aid in the wake of the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, which left hundreds of thousands of Palestinians displaced in the Middle East. UNRWA was initially intended to be a temporary agency, but it has continued to provide support for Palestinian refugees for the better part of 60 years.
 

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